Ideological basis of Polish citizens resettlement from the Eastern Borderlands in the years 1944-1946
Ideological basis of Polish citizens resettlement from the Eastern Borderlands in the years 1944-1946

Summary/Abstract: As an outcome of World War II, Polish borders shifted dramatically. Poland lost the Eastern Borderlands, which had been incorporated into Byelorussian SSR, Lithuanian SSR and Ukrainian SSR. As compensation, the Polish state was granted the area of so-called “Recovered Territories”. In September 1944, agreements of mutual evacuation of citizens were signed between Poland and BSSR, LSSR and USSR governments. To fully understand the phenomenon of repatriations, three important questions should be posed. Firstly, terminology should be reconsidered, especially as the notion of ‘repatriation’ causes numerous problems; it is not clear whether it was an voluntary evacuation or resettlement forced by Soviet authorities. Secondly, the question of the context is to be raised, to what extent repatriation was part of Joseph Stalin’s plan to create monoethnic nation-states in Eastern Europe? Stalin’s program of homonational states and its compatibility with the Marxist-Leninist internationalist ideology is to be evaluated. Finally, the analysis will also include the ideological discourse used by the Polish Communist authorities to justify the loss of the Eastern Borderlands. How did the Polish Workers' Party explain the necessity of repatriation from lands behind the Curzon Line and how did it use Stalin’s idea of monoethnic state to legitimate its authority in Poland? The study is based on archival documents as well as on recent historiographical works.

• Details
• Contents